Optimus G Pro will have 1080p 5.5-inch display, hit US in spring

LG's first full HD smartphone will feature more battery life, new camera modes.

Following rumors and speculation, LG has released the details of its Optimus G Pro smartphone. The successor to the Optimus G features a 5.5-inch, Full HD IPS 1080p display at 440 pixels per inch (ppi), as well as a relatively massive 3140mAh battery pack. It's fueled by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, which clocks in at 1.7Ghz, as well as a 13MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera with Full HD capabilities, which LG mentions in its press release are of "the same quality found on high definition TVs."

The phone will also feature two new camera modes, dubbed Dual Recording and Virtual Reality (VR) Panorama. Dual Recording will enable users to simultaneously capture video with both the front and rear cameras for a picture-in-picture result, while VR Panorama will enable both horizontal and vertical 360-degree panoramas. The new device will still include some of the Optimus G's most notable features, including Quick Memo.

According to Engadget, the phone will launch on Korean carriers SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus, and it won't make its way to North America or Japan until sometime next quarter. LG will debut the phone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month.

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Anything that will utilize the extra DPI when it renders, such as Google Maps and ebooks, will make great use of the screen resolution and will be noticeable to users. The difference between the text clarity on my N7 versus an N10 is amazing.

While I don't necessarily think 1080p screens are a necessity yet I also don't understand the poopooing when something like this comes out. I get that people have an opinion, fine, but it seems like people complain because they can. Stuff like this ultimately ends up benefiting everyone. Be excited for advancements in technology! Besides, like all things in life you have a choice and can certainly chose to not buy the phone. I'm a Windows Phone guy and I'm jealous!

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

Yeah, I remember when everyone was laughing at Apple's Retina screen as if it were a gimmick.

Samsung is shipping a Super AMOLED Plus display at 440ppi this year, so for LG and HTC, this is about keeping up with the Jones and hanging on to Samsung's heals as best they can.

Personally I'm hoping some really cool advances in optical computing/networking ultimately spin off from this obsession with smaller and smaller pixels. I'm sure that mastering the emission and manipulation of light at very small scales and quantities could have a variety of benefits for our civilization besides very sharp text rendering.

Looks like they reduced the bezel a lot. Would like to see a size comparison to the s3. After half a year with that I would say that it's size is workable but I wouldn't mind a phone that is a bit smaller. I think a 4.5inch screen with a smaller bezel would be perfect. The Iphone screen is ok but simply too small.

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

Clearly you've never seen the benefit of higher resolution to small text on a phone...

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

Clearly you've never seen the benefit of higher resolution to small text on a phone...

Actually my point was just that fanboys will play features up or down as their platform of choice leads or trails with regard to those features. Apple started really playing up the PPI thing with the iPhone 4. They won't talk about how far behind they are behind LG with their current anemic 300+ PPI. If Apple goes to ~500 PPI, though, they'll once again espouse how great it is to have such questionably useful features.

. The difference between the text clarity on my N7 versus an N10 is amazing.

Well the N7 doesn't have that great a pixel density, so of course it looks great.

As far as sweet spot goes, I just want a 720p 4.3" inch phone. That would be the perfect size, but manufacturers are gimping them. Between Samsung giving normal-sized phones a crappy resolution or HTC giving them no storage, there just aren't any good options for that size unfortunately. And then you have Google giving large phones with no storage and I wonder why people even buy them.

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

It makes small text more readable.

What? No. You just make the fonts bigger, in fact. The only thing a higher resolution gets you is better aliasing, but on a screen that size you'd be hard pressed to see aliasing even on a 720p resolution. Well it also gets you less battery life because there are more LEDs to light up.

Looks like they reduced the bezel a lot. Would like to see a size comparison to the s3. After half a year with that I would say that it's size is workable but I wouldn't mind a phone that is a bit smaller. I think a 4.5inch screen with a smaller bezel would be perfect. The Iphone screen is ok but simply too small.

The bezel has been reduced compared to the Optimus G, but not "by a lot".

The Optimus G has a tiny bezel already on the sides, maybe 3 mm on each side. The images in the story show at least 2 mm per side. A 1 mm reduction isn't "a lot". Nor is a 33% reduction "a lot".

. The difference between the text clarity on my N7 versus an N10 is amazing.

Well the N7 doesn't have that great a pixel density, so of course it looks great.

As far as sweet spot goes, I just want a 720p 4.3" inch phone. That would be the perfect size, but manufacturers are gimping them. Between Samsung giving normal-sized phones a crappy resolution or HTC giving them no storage, there just aren't any good options for that size unfortunately. And then you have Google giving large phones with no storage and I wonder why people even buy them.

LG's hardware is fantastic, but their software support is abysmal. The Optimus G is still on ICS (although updated solely in their homemarket of Korea only recently), the 4X HD (their prior flagship for 2012) is still on ICS, the Optimus 3D Max (released May 2012) is still on Gingerbread.

LG loves to launch new "high end" devices within 3-4 months of each other, pimping the spec sheets hard, and then forget all about the after-sale support for the prior device. Anyone who buys their phones on a 2 year subsidy contract with the expectation of support is either insane, or blissfully unaware of LG's prior support performance.

I'll wait to see what Samsung brings to the table with the Galaxy S IV. I've had enough of being strung along by LG to even give them the time of day on this one.

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

Clearly you've never seen the benefit of higher resolution to small text on a phone...

And actually if you had an older phone without the hig res output and never saw a high res view for comparison - you wouldn't know any different. Easy to make that statement after the fact.

As even the smartphones circa 2007 have better resolution that Palm Pilots from the 90s. If you really want get into it. But again you're talking from hindsight.

And Apple's soliution does not make it higher resolution - it's some math and special effects that give the perception of higher resolution (which again all the other manufacturers are following now).

Ships with Android 4.0.4, with an OTA update to 4.1.2 available. And an active dev community working on AOSP 4.2.1, AOKP 4.2.1, CyanogemMod 10.1 (with Android 4.2.2)..

I'm already dealing with that situation on this phone (EVO LTE), same as my last phone (EVO 3D). Hardly a stable solution, unless you like waiting 18 months after the phone's release to have everything functioning.

i like the new camera concepts. Having front and rear cameras going at the same time could make for some fun shots - like a GoPro on crack!

It's nice seeing the resolution go up. There are a lot of side benefits that people may not realize, like the drive for better and better batteries and the ability to drive better picture quality to TV screens.

I really cannot wait for Apple to redesign the iPhone. It was a good design when it came out, but since they essentially set the design standard for every manufacturer, it's been, what, 3 years of almost every phone looking the same? Can we hurry up and move on to the next universal phone design, please?

I never understood why you would need a full HD display when it's that small. Can someone explain this to me?

It makes small text more readable.

What? No. You just make the fonts bigger, in fact. The only thing a higher resolution gets you is better aliasing, but on a screen that size you'd be hard pressed to see aliasing even on a 720p resolution.

Which has the strange benefit of... making smaller text more readable... hmm.

Oh it's completely unnecessary... Rather, it's completely unnecessary for now until Apple starts using super retina (500ppi) screens, at which point it will suddenly be a significant benefit and extremely useful.

Is that really the best you can come up with here? I understand that for a certain set of people it's difficult to pass up any opportunity to shit on Apple no matter how tenuous, but really, you're starting to bore me. At least come up with some interesting new insult.

LG's hardware is fantastic, but their software support is abysmal. The Optimus G is still on ICS (although updated solely in their homemarket of Korea only recently), the 4X HD (their prior flagship for 2012) is still on ICS, the Optimus 3D Max (released May 2012) is still on Gingerbread.

$1.00 buys you the FreeGee app on the Play Store. 2 minutes of work gets you a rooted, bootloader unlocked phone.

Takes maybe 20 minutes to download the sub-200 MB ROM image file, less than 5 minutes to wipe/install, and you are off an running with whichever version of Android you prefer.

This is actually one of the easiest phones to test new ROMs on.

Quote:

LG loves to launch new "high end" devices within 3-4 months of each other, pimping the spec sheets hard, and then forget all about the after-sale support for the prior device. Anyone who buys their phones on a 2 year subsidy contract with the expectation of support is either insane, or blissfully unaware of LG's prior support performance.

Good thing they release their kernel/driver sources as required by the GPL, making it very easy for others to pick up and carry on with development. It's quite the opposite story with Samsung and the S3 variants, especially those running Exynos SoCs.

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I'll wait to see what Samsung brings to the table with the Galaxy S IV. I've had enough of being strung along by LG to even give them the time of day on this one.

Don't go with Samsung, then. They made a big positive impact by providing CyanogeMod devs with GS2s, help with sources, etc. And then turned around and did the exact opposite with the GS3. There are a tonne of angry users, devs, etc that feel burned and "strung along" by Samsung. I don't see why they GS4 would be any different.

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.